LT Unlimited

Location Aware Printing

When you run AutoCAD LT on a laptop, you can take your computer with you, but chances are you leave your printer behind. With Location Aware Printing, you can set a different default printer for every network you connect to. Then, when you change networks, Windows automatically sends documents to the correct printer.

To set this up, go to your “Devices and Printers” center and look for “Manage Default Printers.” Note that to get this started, you must have a default printer set already, and you have to select it in order to get the proper menu across the top of the Explorer window.

Once you’ve found it, the “Manage Default Printers” dialog provides you with a drop-down of networks and printers, and lets you mix-and-match.

For example, when I’m connected to my home network, I print to my HP, and when I’m not connected to anything, I print to PDF by default.

One drawback I have discovered is that it’s possible to be connected to more than one network at a time, in which case you might not get the default printer you expect. For example, I’m often connected wirelessly to my home network and by VPN to the Autodesk network. In that scenario, the Autodesk network wins, and I occasionally printed things in San Francisco when I meant to send them to my desktop printer here in DC. (Oops.) So I removed that default printer, but the other ones come in handy!

Redefine a Block Insertion

Ever put some blocks in a drawing, either from a tool palette or DesignCenter, only to discover later that the source file has been changed? Fortunately, the two tools that made inserting the block easy in the first place can also help you redefine it.

All you need to do is navigate to the source file in DesignCenter or find the block on the tool palette, and right-click on the block.

In DesignCenter, your options are insert, insert & redefine, or redefine.

On a tool palette, you just have “redefine.”

Note that any “redefine” option is only available if the block already exists in that drawing. If it doesn’t, the redefine options will be grayed out.

By the way, I found the inspiration for this tip while browsing the latest edition of Michael's Corner over at CADTutor.net -- both excellent resources for all things AutoCAD.

Last Day for Early AU Registration

If you’ve been debating whether to attend AU 2010, today would be a good day to decide: it’s the last day for early registration. The conference fee increases by $500 tomorrow.

If the in-person event is out of your budget, be sure to check out AU Virtual. The Standard Pass is free, and you can upgrade to the Premier Pass with even more content for just $139. Or ask your friends who are attending AU – each conference registration comes with 4 Premier Passes for sharing.

Resize Program Windows with Snap

Most of the the time, when you’re working in AutoCAD LT, you’ve got it maximized to completely fill up your screen. But what if you need to see two programs at once? Maybe you need to see a drawing and your e-mail, or a drawing and an Excel file, or a PowerPoint and an Excel file…you get the picture.

You’ve always been able to do this (more or less) by resizing windows and dragging them around your desktop, or with the “tile windows” option, but that’s imprecise at best.

In Windows 7, however, all you need to do to make a program window take up exactly half of your screen is to click-and-drag its titlebar over to the left or right side of your screen. When it gets close enough, a glassy outline appears showing you what will happen when you release the mouse button.

(Click the images for a larger view.)

Then you can do the same thing for a program on the other side of the desktop, and you have two perfectly sized windows to work with. This is most impressive on a wide-screen monitor (which mine is not), but you get the idea.

When you’re done, just click-and-drag the titlebar of a program to the top of your desktop to have it fill the entire screen again.

This only works with actual program instances, not with multiple open drawings in a single session of AutoCAD LT, but even so I find I use it all the time, especially for Word, Excel, Firefox, etc. It’s definitely one of my favorite quick-and-easy Windows 7 features.

<Update> With the assistance of my cat (who likes to "help" me type), I just discovered a keyboard shortcut for this: Windows key + Left/Right arrows will snap the active window to the left or right side, or un-snap it if it's already been snapped.

Sketchbook Hero Image Contest

Need a break from lines, arcs, and circles? Put on your artist’s hat and draw a new hero image for Sketchbook instead!

What’s a hero image? It’s the picture on the splash screen that shows up every time you launch a product. The team has decided that Sketchbook Mobile (for the iPhone and iPod Touch) needs a new one, and they’ve turned to the users for help. They’re running a contest where the winning image will be the new hero image for Sketchbook Mobile.

Here are the official rules & info:

• Submissions may be created using any of the Autodesk SketchBook products, including SketchBook Pro, SketchBook Mobile, SketchBook Pro for iPad, SketchBook Designer and Autodesk SketchBook Express.
• The contest is free to enter and each contestant may submit one image.
• Submission Period. The contest is open for submissions from October 18, 2010, to November 14, 2010.
• Selection of Finalists. Once the submission period closes, Autodesk will choose finalists and post their images on the contest site for public viewing and voting.
• Voting Period. Public voting will be open from November 30, 2010, to December 14, 2010. Each person may vote only once. The winner will be announced on December 21, 2010.

To learn more about the contest, visit http://www.autodesk.com/sketchbookhero.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Sketchbook totally makes me wish I were a better artist…maybe it’s time for some lessons.

AutoCAD for Mac hits stores today

If you’ve been holding your breath waiting for the day when you can run AutoCAD natively on a Mac machine, get ready to breathe again. (You know I’m speaking metaphorically here, right? Good. Six weeks is a long time to go without breathing, and that’s only if you’ve been waiting since we made our announcement…anyway, back on track…)

AutoCAD for Mac is now available for trial and purchase from a variety of resellers, online retailers, and at www.autodesk.com. It’s also available for free to current full-time students through the Autodesk student community.

So grab your Mac, download the trial, and check it out!

Help decide who goes to AU 2010

I hope you entered this year’s YouTube contest for a free pass to Autodesk University 2010 in Las Vegas, but even if you didn’t, you can still affect the outcome.

Voting is now open, so you can pick your favorite entry and help send him or her to AU. This year it’s being handled through the AU Virtual environment, so you do need to sign up before you can vote. However, the AUv Standard Pass is FREE and includes access to a limited selection of virtual classes and product clinics with live interactive Q&A, plus insider interviews, roundtable discussions, real-time viewing of keynotes, industry news, and more, so what have you got to lose?

Check out the contest information page, and don’t wait too long – voting closes October 22.

Windows Instant Search

One of the many featues I like about Windows 7 is Instant Search. You can find Search boxes in every instance of Windows Explorer and in the Start Menu.

 

The “instant” part happens when you start typing in one of those boxes. Enter just a few characters, and Windows starts pulling up relevant results. Keep typing, and it refines the results to match the new string. The next four images show the progression of the search results as I typed “tables” into the Windows Explorer search bar. (Click on any image to see it full size.)

     

The Start Menu search works in a similar way, except it pulls up programs as its first-priority results and files as the second.

It’s good enough that even if I know where a file or program is, sometimes I search for it instead of browsing!

AUGI Wishlist Now Open for Voting

For many years, AUGI has run the official AutoCAD wishlist, compiling suggestions from users like you and presenting the most popular features to Autodesk annually. Several new features in the last few releases are directly results of AUGI wishes (control object visibility independent of layer, anybody?), so vote today and make your voice heard!

http://www.augi.com/autocad/ballot.asp

Don’t see something you want on the list? Submit it as a new wish! (Just please be sure to really search the list to make sure it’s not there…saves the nice folks at AUGI a lot of time when you do.)

You must be a member of AUGI to vote & submit wishes, but it’s free, so why not?

“See the Advantage” Virtual Event TODAY

Autodesk’s “See the Advantage” Virtual Event gives you all the advantages of attending a seminar -- presentations, an exhibition hall, networking opportunities – right from the comfort of your own computer. Today’s event focuses on Autodesk’s AEC products like AutoCAD Architecture, Revit Architecture, and AutoCAD Civil 3D, as well as AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT.

To quote from one of the official event descriptions: “Be among the first to see how the latest Autodesk solutions can help you See the Advantage in your project workflow, from the newest productivity features in the AutoCAD family of products to the latest enhancements in the Autodesk solutions for building information modeling.”

It starts TODAY at 10:00 Eastern (7:00 Pacific), and the AutoCAD LT webcast is at 1:00 Eastern (10:00 Pacific), so hop on over to the registration page (www.autodesk.com/seetheadvantage) and I’ll see you there!